Aspects of the present invention are directed to a phone call management system and a method of operating a phone call management system.
In general, systems that provide users with phone call management capabilities include blacklist mechanisms. Typically, blacklist mechanisms allow a user of a phone to program the phone to return specific ring tones to particular callers when the blacklist mechanism is activated in order to signal that the call is not authorized to the caller. The ring tones may be embodied as sound or music files, which are generally stored in .wav or .mp3 format. Among the drawbacks of the systems supporting blacklist mechanisms, is the fact that the decision to activate the blacklist mechanism is typically a binary one. That is, either a phone call is to be authorized or is not to be authorized.
In fact, it is seen that many of the features of modern phones have binary activation and/or otherwise inflexible features. These include call filtering features, number integration features, in which the user rejects all calls that contain a sequence of numbers in the caller identification (ID), “Reject All” modes and whitelist features which enable users to give some phone numbers priority to be accepted.